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Vermont Victory Revisited

By Charles M. Blow April 11, 2009 12:02 amApril 11, 2009 12:02 am

Photo by Toby Talbot/Associated Press
Gay marriage advocates react to the passage of a gay marriage bill by the Vermont legislature.

The passage of gay marriage legislation in Vermont is momentous, but not necessarily a sign of momentum. Of all the states with pending gay marriage legislation, Vermont may well have been the easiest. Why? Because Vermont is the least religious.

Opponents of gay marriage often base their arguments on religious texts. “Homosexuality is a sin – an abomination.” “Marriage is between men and women.” “Blah, blah, blah.” (It’s baffling how intelligent people try to derive a well-rounded set of modern mores from books written by men who didn’t even know that the world was round. But, I digress.)

It only follows that states whose legislators have fewer religious constituents would be more willing to approve gay marriage bills.

These Nones are very liberal voters. The Nones in Vermont voted more heavily for Barack Obama in November than any of the religious groups in the state as evidenced by this table:

CNN.com

(Vermont gave Obama his second widest margin of victory. The widest margin was in his native Hawaii.)

And, Nones in general are overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage as evidenced by this table that shows they voted nine to one against Proposition 8 in California:

CNN.com

However, there aren’t as many Nones in the other states with pending gay marriage legislation. Take New York for instance. The Assembly passed a same-sex marriage bill in 2007 and is expected to pass it again this year, but Senate Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith has signalled that he may not take it up because he says that he doesn’t have enough votes to pass it.

Why wouldn’t a Democratically controlled Senate have enough votes to pass a gay marriage bill in New York of all places? Because New York is more religious than one might expect, and many Democrats in the state aren’t in favor of gay marriage.

According to the A.R.I.S. survey, only 14 percent of New Yorkers fall into the Nones category. (There is a higher percentage of Nones in West Virginia than in New York.) And, a Quinnipiac University poll released this week found that 52 percent of Democrats in New York supported civil unions or no legal right at all for gay couples over gay marriage.

In order for legislation to pass some legislators would have choose their conscience over a large number of their constituents. That’s not impossible, but is it likely?

UPDATE: For those interested in a national look at how the Nones have grown over time, here is a chart that shows the Nones and religious groups as a percentage of the electorate in presidential election years since 1972. Note that while the Nones have steadily increased, those describing themselves as Evangelical or Born Again seem to have soared. (In the chart Evangelicals and Born Again Christians are a subset of Protestants.)

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It is no surprise that those who do not identify with any religion are more likely to be progressive. These are almost certainly free-thinkers who tend to make more rational choices than those bound by the tenets of a religion or ideology.

It’s quite possible to be “religious” and be for gay marriage, since the overriding message of the Bible is love. Many of us New Hampshire Episcopalians strongly support our bishop and his right to marry.

If religious conservatives were serious about protecting marriage they would seek to ban divorce and have the state only recognize first marriages. They do not do this because that would affect millions of heterosexuals, more than a few of them social conservatives themselves. It’s much easier and makes for much better political hay (if you’re a Republican) to attack a small and long despised minority. So it is no surprize that conservatives are vociferously antigay marriage and dead silent on the legality of divorce. Is it any wonder modern and fair minded people are deserting the polito-churches in droves?

I witnessed a procession of about 200 people following a Passion of the Christ re-enactment yesterday. Was this up state in a religious-right leaning county? No, it was down Smith st. in the heart of progressive Brooklyn. So while it disappoints me profoundly that we cannot get past this ridiculous ban on allowing people to choose whom they marry, it does not shock me in the least, because as per what I witnessed on Smith St, yesterday, there are countless irrational blind faithers out there.

Interesting article… I would suggest that, in New York, people are more sophisticated in their approach to sexual politics (?) than they are in rural settings. Gay marriage will be a tougher sell in New York, simply because people are going to feel comfortable examining the idea. Personally, I am opposed to “gay marriage” and think equivalent “domestic partnerships” are a better idea.

Homosexuality is an entrenched part of the culture in New York, so “acceptance” of gays is not the issue. The fact is, people are going to want to argue about the legal and cultural aspects of the proposed change. The average straight New Yorker has a fairly sophisticated, if crude, working knowledge of gender theory.

It seems that *some* people support gay marriage just because they saw Ellen DeGeneres on T.V. once, and she seemed kind of friendly… But it’s a little more complicated than that!

#7 Claire – How is it more complicated? Please explain. In particular, I’d like to hear exactly how gay marriage would affect you (presumably you are straight) personally in such a negative way that justifies its illegality. Moreover, I’d like to know what the difference is, to you, between domestic partnership and gay marriage? If they confer the same benefits, then what difference does it make – and if they don’t confer the same benefits, why do you wish to deny rights to a specific segment of the population?

“A little more complicated than” WHAT, Claire? It’s very simple really. Entrenched power never wants to yield an inch — logic be damned. The 38 years my lover and I have shared together mean nothing to you. Likewise the rich and complex llives of all manner of LGBT citizens everywhere. Of course things could be worse. Consider Iraq where ‘bringing Democracy” has resulted in the wholesale slaughter of gays and lesbians. I have no doubt you care nothing about that either.

Vermont’s religious ambivalence could be attributed, in part, to the fact that many “Vermonters” are refugees from other states who came to Vermont to “do it again the right way.” By leaving the legacies of family and religion behind, these transplants are much more likely to think for themselves.

A side effect of Vermont’s secular viewpoint is that our communities are unusually well blended. The Burlington area, in particular, is a model of pluralism. Two dozen languages are spoken at Burlington High School.

This is not to say that spirituality is missing in Vermont. It is just more likely to happen in a shared context, (such as the Unitarian Church) where Jews, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims can share the same pew.

I know this is sophmoric at best and really reflects my 5th grade sense of humor. But I had to laugh out loud when I saw “Blow Blog: Gay Marriage” on the Times homepage.

Oh and denying marriage rights to same sex couples is a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. Besides which it also violates the sense of justice and equality that this nation is supposed to stand for. Even someone like me who finds the above mentioned link hilarious can figure that out.

I’ve always thought this was, at its roots, an issue wrapped up in lingering adolescent fear. When I was 14, I was afraid of gay people because a) they were going to hit on me and “convert” me, because somebody suggested they had that kind of power, b) I was insecure, c) I had no experience in dealing with different types of people, just the white, predominantly Catholic group I grew up with in suburban Philadelphia. As I matured and got older, I realized that none of my stereotypes held. I see no rational explanation for how any of this is a threat to my family.

Western Civilization has been full of error, but it has sometimes corrected itself, or attempted to. There was this little movement called The Enlightenment, for example, of which our most influential Founding Fathers were card-carrying members. Their preferred religious idea, Deism, removed the interfering hand of Him from everyday life, which made it possible to regard and engage with the world on a more rational basis.

The ideals of William Lloyd Garrison, native of Newburyport, Mass., my home town, were intimately shaped by the synthesis of Enlightenment universalism and the “scandal of particularity,” the urgent call to action NOW, that underlies both Judaism and Christianity. Without the new moral panorama offered by the Enlightenment, I suspect Christianity would have simply tried to ameliorate the status quo.

I’ve always found it interesting that the people who scream the loudest about “family values” want to deny a certain segment of the population from becoming a family in the true sense of the word. They’re probably the same people who go on and on about the right to life and are also proponents of the death penalty.

I don’t think you understand that it IS a legal battle, and what you call it matters enormously… we’re not just being picky. There are thousands of laws (state and federal) that grant rights to marriage. If you give gays domestic partnership or civil union, they still will not have those rights to marriage because, legally, they are not “married” as defined by law. (if you’d like specific examples and testimony on this, visit //www.civilunionsdontwork.com). Unless if you go in and change the wording of each and every one of those thousands of laws on a state and federal level to include “marriage or domestic partnership or civil union”, then non-married gay couples won’t have access to full equal rights.
So why not just call it marriage and save the tax payer a buck and thousands of gay couples tremendous grief?

Separate is not equal…
Either you’re for equality or you’re not.
Either you’re for gay marriage or you’re against equality.

You give a nice, cogent argument, and you state your point clearly. “It only follows that states whose legislators have fewer religious constituents would be more willing to approve gay marriage bills.”

Unfortunately, it does not fit the data. Vermont and New Hampshire, which have the two highest percentages of nones at 34% and 29%, support your argument. But Wyoming is third at 28%! It has “fewer religious constituents,” but it is certainly not “more willing” to approve gay marriage.

If nothing else, this shows the factors are much more complicated than this blog suggests.

Despite the general strength of your column and your impressive graphic display, I do believe that the veto overriding passage of the “Gay- Marriage Law” grew directly from the realization that the bitterly contentious “Civil-Unions Law” turned out to be not about the overthrow of Western Civilization, but about soccer moms–trans-gender soccer moms, but soccer moms non the less. Once the moderate center of the states electorate saw this as the right to carpool your kid to her soccer games, to visit your dying partner in the hospital, social security benefits, and parent-child contact in divorce, there was a sea change in attitude. Governor Douglas’ veto, and subsequent ambivalence about sustaining that veto was primarily political fence sitting, not moral outrage.

While I personally favor having The State grant Civil Unions to everyone, and return the “Holy Sacrament of Marriage” to the sphere of religion, the “Gay-Marriage Law” does provide for the basic rights of the non-traditional family unit, especially those of the children, within our current national legal framework.

Either people are comfortable with the concept of marriage being between two adults disconnected from the gender of the adults, or they aren’t. At the moment, the majority aren’t.

Until that changes, religious reasons aside, it won’t matter how much push and shove is made on the idea of gay marriage. The argument can be made the constant pressure to create such a legal recognition in fact makes the general discomfort greater among the straight population.

When considering all the other problems we have, this one is so trivial as to be laughable.

A rational person should recognize there are human conscience reasons for treating such partnerships as equal to marriage in all senses, whether for property ownership, visitation in hospitals, adoption, for guardianship and other very basic relationship connections. Similar rational thought should understand the sense official recognition creates devaluation to a people who believe wholeheartedly it’s a religious institution, and those who find homosexuality to be entirely unnatural ergo offensive.

It’s all too often a matter of agenda on both sides used to distract from far more serious problems. It isn’t going to change soon. It’s hard to care for either side sometimes.

I realize that this is an analysis of acceptance of gay marriage based on religion — and that is complicated in itself. However, it would be interesting to layer on this parsing the support for, or discrimination against, gay marriage by age. (Mr. Blow’s brilliant use information graphics could illuminate the nexus.) I believe studies have shown that acceptance of gays and gay marriage among young people in America reaches a significantly wider majority among people 40 and younger within almost all of the various religious and non religious groups. Familiarity through direct experience and media has decreased fear and sanctimony revealing the issue to be one of civil rights for all. Civil unions will never equal marriage because it allows one group to play king of the moral high ground which encourages some to discriminate and justifies others to be violent against members of a minority. Yes, it’s about marriage and religion — and it is about more. It’s about the safety, well-being, and right to live in our own country as equals.